Middletown negotiating purchase of deKoven Drive parcel for housing, retail project

Cassandra Day

MIDDLETOWN —  Negotiations are moving ahead to purchase a property on deKoven Drive to make way for the proposed Village at Riverside downtown mixed-use development, which will include ample parking for residents and visitors.

Among the components are affordable luxury units, condos, and as retail and public spaces.

Parking will be a major component of the block-size development to be built between deKoven and Dingwall drives, Main and Court streets, behind police headquarters. Between 500 and 700 new spaces are intended to replace those lost when the municipal parking lot on Court Street was demolished in 2018.

The city is negotiating with the owners of the adjoining Attention To Detail automotive customization shop parcel to reach a purchase agreement, according to General Counsel Brig Smith.  “I am optimistic that we can reach a deal that meets their needs and ours,” he said. 

The area is considered prime real estate for its view of the Connecticut River and an essential component of the Return to the Riverbend master plan of redevelopment, which aims to reconnect Main Street to Harbor Park and the river. 

The master plan also includes a pedestrian bridge over Route 9.

Housing units will comprise some 19 town homes, 258 apartments consisting of studios and one- and two-bedroom units, and about 56 new on-street parking spaces, Daniel Klaynberg, CEO of Wonder Works Construction of New York, said in November.

Two levels of parking will be reserved for police department staff, who now park their cruisers and other vehicles behind 222 Main St. There will also be 38,000 square feet of retail space on the ground level.

Now that the initial project concept has been delivered to the public, city officials will soon be seeking community feedback, Smith said. “We continue to make progress on the technical elements of the development in the meantime.”

These premium properties are considered a crucial element of Return to the Riverbend, the city’s master plan for redevelopment that aims to reconnect Middletown to the Connecticut River at Harbor Park by means that include a walking bridge and plaza over Route 9. 

The project is a private-public partnership between the city, Spectra Construction & Development, lifelong resident and developer JR Carnegie-Hargreaves, and Klaynberg’s firm. 

More downtown developments

Durham developer Dominick DeMartino is working on several projects in historical buildings on Main Street. 

Tony Prifitera, the owner of Sicily Coal Fired Pizza at 412 Main St., will operate a wine bar at 420 Main St. that is expected to open by the end of March, DeMartino said Wednesday. 

The sign for Nitro Cream 'n Crumbz, a nitrogen-infused ice cream and cookies shop, was recently installed at 422 Main St. That project is expected to be complete by April 1, he added.

Ten apartments are being built above the store at 424 Main St. They will be available for rent beginning May 1.

At 428 Main St., restoration of the former Woolworth building is also underway. A restaurant will occupy the first floor, with an elevator leading to a rooftop bar and patio. DeMartino is reviewing potential restaurants for the site.

The Fresh Cutz barbershop located at the rear of the building will open at the end of March.   

Also, 584 Main St. will be developed into 12 studio apartments and space for a 34,000 square-foot restaurant and bar.

DeMartino is also involved in the Kaplan Drive apartments project. He will present a proposal to the Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Agency in early April to reduce the original 148 units to 102.

Springside on Newfield Street

The Springside Middletown apartments on Newfield Street, or Route 3, will include 486 apartments when both phases of construction are complete. Bob Dale is the developer.

Officials are actively looking to increase the number of living spaces in Middletown. 

“The city continuously is having early planning conversations with developers regarding other possible housing developments,” Middletown Economic and Community Development Director Christine Marques said Monday.

Proposed Trumbull veterans center gets traffic OK, bids should go out soon

Shaniece Holmes-Brown

TRUMBULL — Now that a traffic study has been approved by the town's police commission, plans for the long-awaited Veterans and First Responders Center will go out to bid — and construction could break ground by April, officials say.

“They are two separate bid packages but they’re going out at the same time,” said Ray Baldwin, chairman of the Veterans and First Responders Center Building Committee. “The reason that there’s going to be two packages is because contractors could bid on one based on their expertise, or there might be some that could do both.”

Members of the police commission unanimously approved the traffic study, completed Jan. 16, during a special meeting Feb. 20 at the police department.

"The roads in that area were designed to accommodate a little bit of additional traffic that would be there periodically," Police Chief Michael Lombardo said. "But it’s not going to be a day-in-and-day-out thing with 100 cars there or anything like that."

Plans call for a new 5,500-square-foot building at 1 Veterans Circle at Kaatz Pond, the site of the former, now condemned, veterans building.

It will hold a maximum of 175 people and serve more than 30,000 veterans regionally. Parking will include between 60 and 65 parking spaces, the traffic study stated.

"It’s the same location where the first one was for many years, but that building was no longer habitable," Lombardo said. "So, the town has embarked on trying to get a new one built."

The original building, used by members of both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, was condemned in 2017 due to a failed foundation.

Baldwin said the previous building was "less than half the size" of the new one, and that both the police and first responders will be able to use the new building for training. 

The new center was originally proposed in 2020 with an initial estimated cost of around $2.5 million, but now has an estimated cost of about $4 million, officials said.

According to Baldwin, the committee has received $2.7 million in funding so far including: $1.5 million in state bonding, $750,000 in federal grant funding, a $250,000 state grant secured by Democratic State Rep. Sarah Keitt and $200,000 from the town.

There is currently a $1.2 million state bond request that must be added to the bond agenda by Gov. Ned Lamont in order to be approved, and there is also a $1.2 million earmark by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that is waiting for Congress to approve a federal budget.

Lombardo said the building will not only be used for department training but will also be rented out for special events to the public.

The building's design includes a memorial vestibule, two seminar rooms, two flex classrooms, a gathering room with a grill area, a covered deck that overlooks the pond and an outdoor patio with a fire pit.

"The town and the building committee decided it would be a good location to combine resources with first responders," he said. "It would be a good center for training with both our department and other departments within Fairfield County and would be large enough to do events so we can get good groups of people in there and do that."

New Haven begins reconnecting Wooster Square, Downtown, the Hill with $6.7 million State Street redesign

Mark Zaretsky

NEW HAVEN — Work has begun on a $6.7 million State Street redesign project to transform a nine-block stretch of lower State Street and "knit back together" areas of the city that were chopped up by urban renewal, city and state officials said Tuesday.

 The project aims to unlock redevelopment potential of seven underused parking lots, with 650,000 square feet of mixed-use development, including 450 housing units. It will also create a dedicated corridor for walkers and bicyclists, among other features, officials said. 

"This has really been the culmination of a long process to reknit Wooster Square, the Downtown and the Hill," said Carlos Eyzaguirre, the city's deputy economic development administrator, speaking at a news conference to announce the start of construction, which began earlier this month.

In some regards, "it's putting it back the way it was" prior to the urban renewal era, Eyzaguirre said. 

Because of rain, he spoke beneath the overpass along State Street just south of Bradley Street, within site of traffic barriers recently installed in front of the Encore by Goodfellas restaurant at 702 State St.

Back then, it had "mixed-use (development) on both sides," Eyzaguirre said. 

Mayor Justin Elicker called it "a really exciting project that is inspiring in a lot of different ways." Among them is that it "came out of a project about how to re-energize the Wooster Square neighborhood," Elicker said at the news conference.

As part of the project, "this stretch will become much, much safer for bicyclists and pedestrians," Elicker said.

The project's first phase will include "bump-outs" to protect pedestrians along State Street, from Trumbull Street to Grove Street, with the second phase running from Grove Street to Water Street, Elicker said. Phase 1 is to take place now through the end of the summer. 

Phase 2 will include "activating" several underused parking lots for future development, said Elicker.

Of the project's $6.7 million cost, $5.35 million is being paid by a state grant, with the rest coming from the city, officials said.

"The eastern side of State Street ... is one of the major casualties of urban renewal," said state Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven. He said he was glad to see it finally being improved.

Looney recalled how in the 1950s, that end of State Street was home to many businesses, including an A&P grocery story at Chapel and State streets and watering holes such as Cassidy's and McGuire's.

"I celebrate the fact that it's being renewed," Looney said.

"It's important that we have a new way of looking at transportation," said state Rep. Roland Lemar, D-New Haven, House chair of the General Assembly's Transportation Committee. "This isn't about moving cars. This is about making connections." 

State Street "is a road, but it's more than that. It's a building block of the community," Lemar said.

Matt Pugliese, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, said the Connecticut Communities Challenge Grant program, which is funding the state's share, "is all about transit-oriented development, housing, stitching communities back together."

Alders Eli Sabin, D-7, and Carmen Rodriquez, D-6, both talked about how important the project will be to the neighborhoods they represent.

"This project is about reflecting our values and our priorities as a community," said Sabin, whose ward includes much of the stretch of State Street being renewed.

Rodriguez, whose ward includes parts of the Hill, City Point and Downtown, said the project "is about connecting communities back ... and connecting the Hill to the rest of downtown is important," she said. 

State Street, one of New Haven’s major downtown corridors, connects the Downtown, East Rock, Hill and Wooster Square neighborhoods. The area includes the State Street train station, according to a press advisory.

The $6.7 million project will redesign the streetscape along the nine-block stretch between Trumbull and Water Streets. 

Old Lyme Quarry Owner Ordered to Cease Unpermitted Work Along Three Mile River

Cate Hewitt

OLD LYME — After a discussion of unpermitted work at a quarry that lacked proper erosion protection along Three Mile River, the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission ordered the property owner to cease all work and to appear at a show cause hearing on March 7.

Ron Swaney, who owns 308-1 Mile Creek Road, told the commission Tuesday night that he had been working to improve the the 43.5 acre property by building berms along the river, removing beavers that had built a dam in a culvert, adding boulders along the river’s edge, and rerouting the driveway – all without securing permits. 

“We had water issues – Three Mile River was coming across the road and going into the ponds. So I created a berm with a two to one slope,” he said. “We’re cleaning up the place, making it nice… Where I made a mistake is I didn’t come to you first, I apologize for that,” he told the commission.

Neighbors Peter and Millie Caron, who live across the river, presented pictures to the commission of activity at the quarry, comparing before and after pictures from a few years ago to the present. 

“There are no environmental protections,” said Peter Caron. “They rip out trees and then put down wood chips. This is not something new, it’s been before this commission many times since the 90s.” 

After neighbors sent Eric Knapp, the wetlands agent for the town, photos and videos showing earth-moving work within 100 feet of the river and wetlands, he issued a violation notice to Swaney on Jan. 29, directing him to attend Tuesday’s hearing. 

Knapp described the area in the map submitted by former property owner Peter Alter where it had been agreed activity could take place. But extensive earth-moving and clear-cutting had taken place outside of that designated area, especially filling in areas and creating an earthen berm along the river edge, Knapp said. 

Knapp said there were piles of fill on the property but he didn’t know how much had been excavated from the site and how much had been trucked in. On a site visit, Knapp said he observed a lack of erosion controls in and around the ponds on the property.

“In 2022 the ponds had turtles and other wildlife. Now they could not exist with the level of siltation there,” Knapp said.

Swaney also owns an adjacent 2.5-acre parcel abutting at 304 Mile Creek Road where Knapp said Swaney has been clear cutting within 100 feet of the river. 

Swaney said he wanted to move the driveway entrance onto the adjacent property, further away from Union Chapel on Shore Road.

“It was a good neighbor thing. I thought it would be a nice thing to do, out of respect for the church,” Swaney told the commission. 

But Rachael Gaudio, chair of the commission, told Swaney that they had made it clear to him in 2022 that he needed to apply for permits before proceeding with any work. 

“The issue I have is that we went through this whole song dance before and you said maybe your big mistake was not coming to us sooner. I think we made it very clear in 2022, that you needed to come to us and ask for permission not forgiveness, I’m really disappointed that this is where we are right now,” she said. 

Gaudio said that all of the work was within 100 feet of the wetlands, as well as outside of the area the commission had previously approved, and the level of work being done seemed to be increasing. She added that Swaney also did not secure the permit required to clear beaver dams. 

She said that in her tenure on the commission, starting in 2017 she’d never had to deal with another property owner who had to return to commission on multiple occasions.

“And now we’re looking at huge enforcement action and potential litigation. That’s where this road leads to,” she said. 

Swaney defended a number of his actions, and said that there had been no erosion on the property and that when he had been asked to put up silt fences, he had done so. 

Gaudio said there were a number of issues and that throughout Swaney failed to apply for necessary permits in the areas regulated by the commission. 

The commission moved unanimously to issue a cease and desist order. Before the March 7 hearing, Swaney will be required to retain a soil scientist to prepare a restoration plan to address the work done in the regulated area without permits, which will also identify the types and possible origins of the fill used on the site. 

Michael Aurelia, a new member of the commission, said he believed in working with individual owners before moving to cease and desist, and to give Swaney a month to submit an application for permits. 

But commission member Mike Miller said that Wetlands had tried to work with Swaney and “we are beyond the point of letting a new application come in as if this was a brand new discovery.” 

Knapp said that Swaney could submit an application but the next step was a “thorough evaluation of what has occurred to understand what work Swaney has done to the site, especially how much and what type of fill was added. 

“We need better information, and until we have better information, I think that the best answer is don’t allow further work because that’s what got us where we are today,” Knapp said. 

Gaudio warned that if the commission hears that work is being done on the site, they will start litigation.